Telling Stories About SIDS - Mothers' Accounts of Loss

Gurbutt, Dawne J. (2003) Telling Stories About SIDS - Mothers' Accounts of Loss. In: Narrative, Memory and Health. University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, pp. 37-45.

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Abstract

This chapter explores the way in which mothers talk about their infants and
their experience of grief following the loss of an infant in Sudden Infant Death
Syndrome (SIDS). Mothers tell stories about their infant and in defining their
relationship to the dead infant they maintain their own status as mothers. They
recount their experiences of loss following SIDS which indicate the way they
felt about themselves as mothers. They describe the ways in which they
maintain a mothering role following the death of the infant. Mothers include a
variety of objects, people, words and sites in a network that facilitates the
telling of particular stories about the infant. Accounts of the infant and
subsequent sudden death in turn become part of the story of the ‘self’ as
mother. This chapter addresses the importance of remembering the dead in
everyday conversation and how the unique characteristics of SIDS influence
the formation of particular maternal narratives.

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